FUTURES THINKING ENHANCES LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS
I use futures thinking tools and methodologies in my leadership work with executives as a means for them to achieve the results required of them. When we look at the correlations to Leadership Effectiveness of ‘The Leadership Circle’ we notice how important it is to be Purposeful and Visionary in creating your Strategic Focus to Achieve Results through well thought out and Decisive action.
The timeframe for futures thinking and strategy development depends on the purpose you have given for your self or for someone, as the client is always an individual not an organisation. The outcomes sought are to help individuals to focus on their own actions to support them to take responsibility for innovation and creation by becoming more comfortable with taking some risk and to provide relevant data that identifies issues or trends that may not have been considered. Then as a group, going forward collectively to think about and map out what happens today versus what you want in the future, and how you might work better together to build a work environment supportive of change and innovation.
Effective strategies arise from the concept of emergence. There are no ranks all is open, multiple paradigms coexisting. Futures thinking and strategy development is a devise for perception and reconceiving. One of the benefits of futures work is in stimulating your thought processes by getting people to ask questions that they may not have asked before within the context of not knowing the answers and not being required to know the answers. Futures thinking then moves from accomplishing goals to being an asset in exploration as plausibility is a co-created construct between people. Scenarios should not be best case/worst case. They should all have good and bad and should all be considered.
Scenarios are word pictures of plausible futures that challenge us to be proactive in identifying risks and opportunities and developing strategies and policies to address those challenges. Futures thinking as narrative employs dramatic tension to drive thinking towards innovation and insight. Purpose of using futures thinking and scenarios is more important than the implementation. Through good Systems Awareness if you have the purpose and reason for scenarios and strategies than the implementation will be natural.
The test of good/bad scenarios is did the work produce the client’s needs? 1/3rd of the work is in producing scenarios and at least 2/3rd is in understanding what they are for and how they can be used. This 2/3rd to 4/5th is the work upfront which is very important.